


steel-eyed death and men fighting to be warm

by voodoochild



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Aunt/Nephew Incest, Backstory, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Romani Character, Slurs, background Tommy/Grace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2440490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First loves, last loves, and Thomas Shelby having a rough time being honest with himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	steel-eyed death and men fighting to be warm

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the **fic-promptly** prompt of "first and last love", and for **thatyourefuse** , who wanted something with a teenaged Tommy.
> 
> Spoilers up to episode 2.02, and for my own speculation about why Arthur Senior left.

_And if I pass this way again you can rest assured_  
I'll always do my best for her - on that I give my word  
In a world of steel-eyed death and men who are fighting to be warm  
"Come in" she said "I'll give you shelter from the storm"  
\- Bob Dylan, "Shelter from the Storm"

***

He tells people his first love was Mary Falworth.

It's a good story. All of Small Heath thought Mary was a good girl. Smart and kind, pretty blonde hair and blue eyes. Tommy had taken her to one of the parish dances, given her wildflowers just because they matched her dress. Arthur was jealous; John would have been, if he had been old enough at the time. 

[Mary Falworth thought he was dirt. Mary Falworth called him "pikey" and threw the wildflowers into the rubbish, then went and danced all night with Robbie Laurence. When he thinks of ugliness, of people looking down on him, of the people he wants to step on now he's on top, he remembers Mary's sneer, her cold dismissal.]

***

If he thinks about it, his first love was horses.

Horses are honest, horses are loyal, and if you treat a horse well, he'll never betray you. He'll do everything you command for nothing in return but a soft voice, an easy touch on the bit, and the sweetness of a few apples. That's what Granddad always said; the lessons he taught his grandsons before the lessons on bookmaking, on carefully applied threats, on when you could get away with fixing a race and when you should cut your losses.

Tommy always swore he'd work with horses; a trainer, a breeder - still dreams, when the smoke of France clears, of turning all the ledgers and guns over to someone else and buying a farm. He could do it, he tells himself, go truly legit.

[But he's seen too many horses die. Ordered too many men to die. Dispatched enough of both himself. He'll never be clean enough for a normal life.]

***

He was so young he barely remembers, but he's loved Polly ever since he first saw her.

He doesn't really remember his mother. Bits and pieces - green dress, bright golden rings, some words of a song ( _"chi mangav me barvalimo"_ ) - before she died in childbed. She's a collection of comparisons to him ("you have your mother's common sense", "you're just like your mother, stubborn", "got your mother's eyes, boy, blue enough to drown in"), ones he resents more and more every time he hears them.

Polly isn't his mother. Polly is real. Polly took care of them - walked into the house one morning, cloud of tobacco and perfume, took in John's black eye and his own bruised arms, and threw an iron at his father's head for knocking around children. He looked, wide-eyed, up at her and asked her to promise she'd stay, and she's never broken that promise.

[He forgives her for the drink and the opium. Forgives her for letting the parish take her children and not being Shelby enough to fight them. He can't forgive her for refusing to admit she loves him back for a very long time.]

***

He swears Grace will be the last time he falls in love.

She was hope he should have lost long ago and willful blindness to a girl that wasn't what he wanted her to be. He wanted her to be purity and familiarity, wanted a beautiful blue-eyed blonde girl, children to run after him and have the mother and father he never had. And she wasn't that at all.

Broke his heart, yes, but broke his trust even more. Women will lie, he learned, get under your skin and twist the knife in the places you didn't even think to defend against. Soft words, softer skin, complete silence in his head for the first time since the war. Easy to lose himself.

[He respects her, despite everything. Steel and gunpowder, shooting Campbell before he could get her, making a new life of it in New York. He knows she doesn't really love her banker, but he won't go chasing what-could-have-been.]

***

The first and last time Thomas Shelby falls in love - howling, screaming, awful love that cracks him open and isn't pure at all - is a cold January morning and an empty house.

He's eighteen years old, a man grown for years now, and yet he is still a frightened little boy cowering at his father's boots when it comes to Arthur Shelby Senior. Except Ada's just run the entire length of the Cut to get him from the factory - Dad and Polly fighting, screaming and hitting each other, guns drawn - and the door clatters like a battering ram when he throws it open and rushes into the kitchen.

Polly's alone, smoking, a black eye on her face and a shotgun resting against the leg of the table.

"What the hell happened?" he asks, beelining for her and getting his hands smacked away. "Let me see-"

"He's gone," she says, quiet and calm, and he doesn't believe her. Dad's left before, and he always comes back, reeking of booze and stale cunt, cozying up to Arthur, spoiling Ada, knocking around Tommy and John for getting in his way. It's always the same, and it shows on his face, because Polly shakes her head and takes his hands. "Thomas, he's *gone*. Not coming back."

"How do you know?"

"Because he's dropped a child of his in my lap for the last bloody time. Mrs. Cooper's got the latest one, since she's looking after Sally and Michael as well. Your brother's named Finn, and your fucking useless father won't lay a single hand on him, Thomas, I swear it."

He doesn't even have the heart to ask "how do you know?", because she's sworn it before, but this time she's shaking with anger and the shotgun's still there. He looks over to it, and a cold little smile he'll see in the mirror in a few years cuts across Polly's face.

"Just the shoulder. Just enough to prove I'd use it. Trust me, he's not coming back, and we're all better off for it."

And there's an echo in his ears, pain like sharp bands wrapping around his heart - he cannot take his eyes off her. She's never looked more beautiful to him, not in those years of growing pains when he used to get lightheaded at the sight of her in a shift, bathing Ada, or when he used to wank off to the wrap of her lips around a cigarette. She's *perfect*, in her stained dress and bruised face and her hair coming out of the curls. 

"Thank you," he whispers, kissing her hands. Wants, desperately, to kiss her mouth, but they've had that conversation. But his father is gone, and Polly is here. She's never left them. "I'm sorry I couldn't-"

"You shouldn't have had to," she spits, but it's softened by her hand in his hair. 

[From that day on, when he means it, he bows his head for her. Gives over to her, even just for a moment.]

***

Many people fall in love with Thomas Shelby - you could say it's his gift, or his curse - but Polly Gray cannot pin it down to one single moment.

She loves him when she first sets eyes on him, bright and blue-eyed and clutching a model horse, too-serious and all of six years old. She loves him when he brings home trouble, and loves him when he talks himself out of it. She loves him when he cleans her shotgun the morning she runs her brother out of Birmingham. She loves him when he combs her hair and fastens her dress every morning for the week after her children are taken from her. She loves him when he marches off to war, and loves him when he comes back to her. 

She loves him even as he turns cold and calculating, when he gets ambitious and angry and begins building his empire. Their empire, it's half hers, he tells her, and she stupidly doesn't believe him. She believes him - and loves him more than ever - when he sits her down in the parlor of a house and tells her it's hers. Loves him when he plays dice with his life and the lives of his siblings, even as she wants to scream and beat him stupid for it.

She doesn't think she can bear to let that love turn to what it wants to - the itch under her skirts and the greedy urge to take what he's been offering her since the day he turned 14. And then one day, she can't fight it any longer, makes him her partner in every way. Spreads her legs for him and shakes for him and comes screaming for him, better and more right than it's ever felt for her. 

They'd thrown their lot in together long ago, for better or worse, and she remembers that through warfare and retaliation and the open scar of her children. She and Tommy are what makes the business run and what keeps the family from ruin, and if she has to sin and break laws and break bones to keep him, that's between her and her God.

[The Lord knows Polly Gray has only ever loved one man, after all.]

**Author's Note:**

> \- "chi mangav me barvalimo" = "I do not want a fortune", from the traditional Romany song [Rovel o Del](http://gypsylyrics.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/rovel-o-del/).


End file.
